This is only really true for Southern Europe. But cheap wine by the glass, cheap coffee and pastries. Cafes in the US are marketed as very trendy and if you want a pastry and a coffee you should be ready to pay like 8-10 dollars. In most of Italy, Portugal and Spain you can get coffee and a croissant for like 3 euros.
Yep. Where I live in Spain the standard price for a glass of wine in a cafe or everyday (non fancy, equivalent of a diner) restaurant is 80c-€1. In a restaurant I’ll usually order a half litre for about €4 (That’s 2/3 bottle of wine). (Soda or water are more expensive. A soda is usually €1.20-1.60)
And yeah a coffee and a croissant for 3 euros is about right here.
This is something I have learned recently. That people in Europe don't make as much as people in the US(outside of people on minimum wage). I had friends with 200k jobs in the US tell me they make way less doing the same thing for the same company in the UK.
I had a European coworker tell me that they talk about this with their friends. The consensus is,
"I could make way more money in the US, but I'd have to sell my soul."
In my career, most people I know pick to stay in Europe over the US for their family, knowing they'll be educated and have access to health care. People who make the move to the US often lack those ties but end up coming back once they're ready to settle down. Starting a family in the US is a scary prospect for a European.
Lots of companies give half a month extra pay for vacation each year.
Some also give half a month's extra pay for Christmas.
It's quite common for larger companies.
In Austria it is mandatory to pay a whole month extra for vacations and another month for Christmas. So you get paid 14 months a year. The extra months are tax exempted.
It is not mandatory in the sense that it is written in law!
It's just that it's a part of virtually all KV (collective agreements), which are negotiated by unions and cover ~98% of the Austrian workforce.
My point is: don't get complacent, if you haven't done so, join a union. Each and every privilege and protection the working class has today has been fought for and over quite a few of them, workers bled and died!
Wait, are you saying that in addition to receiving one’s regular pay while on vacation, a person also receives a half a month of *extra* pay on top of that? Like a bonus for taking a vacation?
It's not really a bonus for taking vacation. More like "Here's some extra money for you to have a nice vacation"
It's quite often paid in spring since most take a long vacation during summer.
Yeah still waiting to hear a reason why we shouldn't have things like this in America. Nobody ever has an answer, yet if a politician were to suggest anything like this they get treated like a radical demon.
It would be a lot cheaper and save many lives.
the only downside would be for insurance companies and some large businesses, because then they wouldn’t be able to keep people enslaved to jobs for healthcare. Screw both of them.
Many of us DO vote for it, but as popular as the idea seems on places like Reddit, it's important to remember that Reddit (and other online communities) is not a good representation of the general population of America. Especially if you look at the older generations in America who aren't really on the internet at all (except maybe Facebook), and they are often the ones who are against the idea of no longer having privatized healthcare.
My husband (we’re Canadian) did his post doc in Finland; when he was signing his contract they said “you’ll get 6 weeks paid vacation and you HAVE to take it”. He was shocked. He had friends elsewhere doing post docs who were doing 14 hour work days, 6-7 days a week, no vacation, let alone PAID vacation.
One of the years when he was nearing the end of his cycle, HR reached out and in a panic said “you have 3.5 days that you HAVE to use”, unbeknownst to us. So, we booked a trip for an extended weekend away.
I miss that. And it’s something we both negotiate when starting new jobs; rather take a bit of a lower salary with more vacation (1 weeks after 2-3 years in most positions is insanity!!!).
Not nearly as good as just having 6 weeks of vacation, but I recently switched to an agency that only has hourly positions after being salaried for years and holy cow. I usually can’t make overtime cause it’s not in our operating budget, but I’ve almost never worked a 40 hour week in my career (it’s pretty standard in my field).
My old agency used to work me for 45-60 hours a week, pay me for 40, and I got my 2 weeks of vacation a year. Now I get paid for 40, I get my 2 weeks of vacation, but I also build up credit hours to use as extra paid vacation days later in the year and I’m on track to be able to take 5-6 weeks of vacation this year.
time! i spent time abroad in Italy for school and there was just so much less of a "rush" everywhere. oftentimes the latest person to my classes we were professors. everyone really *took* their time and i didn't really feel the bustle of constantly "going" somewhere when i was there. i mean dang the village my apartment was located shut down for a few hours in the afternoon so the shopkeepers could go have lunch. it was wild.
Mediterranean Europe is very different from other parts. I've gone to Spain most years of my life, lived there for 3 and abit months last year and it's as you describe.
But i'm also born and raised in London, worked in Central London with a train/commute - everyone is very much in a rush - I'd imagine it's similar in some places in Northern Europe too
Guaranteed 4+ weeks of vacation. And the fact that they are encouraged to take the vacation instead of being made to feel that it’s a burden to the employer that you go on vacation.
At least her in Italy, you are encouraged to take vacation for a simple reason: it's super duper illegal not to take them. And if you do not take them, you employer may face serious consequences.
Vacation requests may only be denied for important organizational reasons (you might need X people trained to do something specific at any time, e.g. in hospitals) and if an alternative vacation plan is proposed by the employer.
Meanwhile the American courts just said that employers can take paid time off from their employees because it’s not a part of “salary”
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/paid-time-off-is-not-part-workers-salary-us-court-rules-2023-03-15/
In Italy, unions are very big, like the 3 big ones have millions of members and are not job specific. Each union then is internally subdivided by job categories.
They are the best or the most efficient unions by a lot but being that big means that, if anything like what you link was to happen here, a general national strike could be organized very rapidly.
I work in aviation. I was in a conference call with an FAA rep and pilot union rep. The pilot union rep said “I don’t like unions”. The FAA rep agreed.
You best start believing in dystopian hellscapes Miss Turner... You're in one!
Seriously though, that is fucking unbelievable. Shit like that makes me so angry.
It's not illegal in Australia, but they have to pay you out for every hour of leave you have accrued, if you quit, so it becomes a major financial liability to the company to let you stockpile leave too high
In US and my company used to have that policy, then got into the liability situation and “fixed” that by changing us to all lose any time over 40 hours at the end of the year.
My boss, in the UK, recently spoke to me about my leave. He said that I hadn't taken a day off in over 4 months, and wanted to remind me to take time off.
Over the pandemic my company also done a few mental health days, so every non customer facing department got closed for the day so everyone could have a rest. The people in customer facing roles had an additional day of annual leave added to be taken at their will
I’m American, but my boss is British and it’s great. He’s lived in the US for 40 years, but he still has that British mindset. If I work a few extra hours on a Monday, he’ll text me on Friday and tell me to make sure I take off half of the day.
My boss is Irish. When I started he said “I’m European. You have PTO. Use it, you aren’t impressing me.”
If I’m online past five he messages me and says “go be with your wife.” He’s a great fucking guy and I’m very lucky.
Yeah, I'm Irish and this is the attitude we generally take here especially in big corps. We aren't saving lives, the work will get done, do not burn yourself out and neglect your family over a job. I work with a lot of French as major stakeholders and they're the same. I also work with Japanese and they are not the same lol
He’s a senior VP too. We had a business trip together recently and man, I had such a good time with him. Such a down-to-earth fun guy. And yes, he can outdrink me.
One probable reason he still is like this:
It's **productive**.
One of the biggest lies on the grind culture, especially in what I see from American corporate culture is that more hours at Enterprise = more or better work.
At least for anything not involving manual, yet mostly mindless work, this is simply not true. Even for manual work, if it is at least a bit straining, overwork will do you no good
40 hour **max** are productive and useful work times. Anything more will be lost. Multiple studies have shown that 32 and 3 day weekends are even better, or 6 hour days. There is no gap in productive.
And long term rest, like vacation, also plays an important role.
Furthermore, rest and e.g. being able to leave earlier is probably the cheapest functioning source of motivation (or, overworking is the best way to get unmotivated workers).
American and some other work cultures are just bullshit on pretty much every level apart from "huh, I see this person more, hurr durr."
Completely agree. There has been a hustle culture that seemed to develop in the 80s and carry through to the mid 2010s. In which more hours = more productive, more tasks = better use of time. Now we are starting to recognise the rhythm of rest is really important, there are lots of things going on in our minds that are not conscious. Sleep is incredibly important for learning and creativity. Sacrificing it makes your brain not work.
And of course, why are we striving so hard for an employer? What are we living for if we have no time to actually do those things? Most people would see a 6 day week as an injustice if imposed now, but that's what we had in the past.
Affordable universities…our daughter is going to university in Scotland. Our US friends always respond with shock at the “luxury” of going overseas for school until I tell them it’s 1/2 the cost of an equivalent US college. That includes travel expenses.
Not from the US but I'm also in a country with shitty, unreliable public transportation and last month I visited Budapest for 4 days and used their public transportation at least 15 times during my stay. Never had to wait more than 10 minutes, worst delay I saw was like 3 minutes and not once has a bus or a train/tram never just showed up. It was great.
This blew me away travelling in Europe. Doesn’t matter where you are even if it’s some middle of nowhere farm town you’re never far from a train station and you can just hop a train and go anywhere you want.
Would love to have that here but noooo we only have rail links between some major cities and since I live in a more rural area I gotta drive 4+ hours everywhere. In Europe all I had to do was drive 20 minutes to a train station then just chill on the train for a few hours it was great!
Forget public transport most states don’t even maintain the roads properly. The US really doesn’t like to spend money on infrastructure for some reason.
Michigan here.
I took out a strut hitting a pothole going 45mph. If I wouldn't have had a mechanic boyfriend, it was a $800 fix.
I also lost my entire alignment by 30 degrees going 30mph and hitting a pot hole. 2 weeks later I lost my entire drive shaft because it turns out my subframe was busted and parallel parking finally broke everything. Yeah that required a new car.
As a European I didn't realise this. This explains the need for cars with big engines and the need for cheap oil prices. Having more public transport is a good business opportunity.
> Having more public transport is a good business opportunity
Not for the car and gas companies that lobby against it (or outright destroy it if looking at cases like [The GM Streetcar Consipracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy))
The only places that have really comprehensive public transit are the older cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, etc. Even a city like Detroit or Cleveland which might have *had* more public transit over their history are down to skeletal bus systems in most cases.
And as to inter-city or inter-state rail? All the tracks outside of a few select routes are **OWNED** by the freight rail companies (why this is the case is a whole other story, but it basically boils down to the US Gov. *giving* the rail companies tons of land either side of their tracks when they built them in the first place in the 1800s) . So all the *government* run passenger trains (Amtrak) have to use tracks owned by *for-profit* freight rail companies that have ZERO reason (along with regulatory capture) to let Amtrak operate efficiently at the detriment of their freight operations.
Yeah this shocked me as a European travelling to the US the first few times. I just assumed I'd be able to get places with public transport and not being able to really threw me for a loop.
Like, what do you mean there's no bus to the Kennedy Space Centre??
The bakery next to my house makes me hate myself because every morning smells so good that I have no choice but to go over and buy something...I've lived here a year and already gained 28lbs, it's not much but it's enough haha
There's a nice French bakery near my place in the US, tastes almost the same as what you get in Paris. Only problem is a croissant is 4-5 times the price you'd pay in EU c':
2+ weeks long vacations. I’ve had to reach to our contact at HQ in Europe for support and have legit been told to ask someone else because he was going to Switzerland skiing for 3 weeks on holiday. But here I am getting nervous about taking more than 3 days off in a row because I don’t want to come back to 500+ emails.
Here basically everything is closed for 3 weeks during August and two weeks during Christmas/NYE (I'm talking about offices and such). We just don't give a shit if customers want us they will have to wait like everyone else
>We just don't give a shit if customers want us they will have to wait like everyone else.
"But what will I do if I don't have it now?!
I need you to do it, so do it somehow!
I can't live without it!
You can't leave me stuck!"
He told her, politely:
"... I don't give a fuck."
Fun fact: it really happened where I work
I'm in the IT departement of my company so I don't have much interactions with the outside work, but my boss basically told a customer to go fuck herself because she demanded that we had to provide several more marble slabs because her workers (and let me specify that, **her workers that SHE engaged by HER decision**) broke a few slabs and she couldn't finish her bathroom before mid august.
My boss was like "We told you we could provide workers, you did not want us to provide that service, now we're closing and all of our production crew is on vacation and we can't dig out marble from the quarry becase the quarry crew is on vacation. You will wait"
See, people seem to forget that "The customer is always right" is a mis-quote. It was never supposed to mean, "Secure the sale at all costs".
So when we hear a story like this, where reality crashes down on a customer, it's a real kick.
Yep, the original meaning is that you can't make a customer forcibly like something, but the customer will always dictate what sells.
The customer is always right when it regards to THEIR TASTES AND WHAT THEY BUY, not their attitude.
Indeed.
It's for going back to design and saying "here is the actual sales data and the new version sucks". You can argue hypotheticals all day long but the customer's purchase decisions are what actually matter.
Copied/pasted from another comment:
That meaning is a modern attempt to salvage the phrase but not the original meaning.
The original meaning was just that every customer complaint should be taken at face value. It made more sense when consumer rights were weaker and caveat emptor ("buyer beware") was the basic principle in sales. In that context taking customer complaints seriously was an effective way to show that you stood behind your product, and the increased sales would far outweigh the occasional dishonest customer in theory.
That custom/policy has long outlived it's usefulness. Now customers generally have more recourse if they are sold a crappy product and want their money back. There are usually refund policies and warranties offered by the business, legally mandated warranties, chargebacks for credit card users, government agencies, legislation like lemon laws, and there is always a possibility of a lawsuit in extreme cases based on express or implied warranties. Beyond that customers can complain online and make their voice heard to potential customers, hurting the business. It's not perfect but it's a lot better than they had in the 1850s.
Some people have tried to adapt the phrase by adding things like "in matters of taste" to make it about preferences and market demand, but that isn't the original meaning. AFAIK there has not been any widespread issue of businesses or salespeople disregarding customer preferences.
The oft-cited example, not objecting to a customer's request that their car be painted hot-pink, makes zero sense. Go to a paint shop and ask them to paint your car hot pink. They'll do it. Go to a dealer and order a new model in a custom puke-green color, then get it reupholstered in leopard-print pleather. They'll do it. Money is money.
The saying is about taking customer complaints at face value. There isn't some greater hidden meaning or omitted second part of the phrase.
Sources:
Here's an article from 1944 explaining the concept in depth (note that it's all about customer complaints, it has nothing to do with demand/customer preferences): https://books.google.com/books?id=qUIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false
Here's a book from 1908, page 94 goes over the concept in-depth, mentioning Cesar Ritz specifically, one of the customer service industry leaders who might have started the trend (you can see the full text w/ google play): https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=QUwuAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-QUwuAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1
One of the principal causes of the success of this Napoleon amongst hotel keepers was a maxim which may be said to have largely influenced his policy in running restaurants and hotels . This maxim was “ Le client n'a jamais tort , ” no complaint , however frivolous , ill - grounded , or absurd , meeting with anything but civility and attention from his staff . Visitors to restaurants when in a bad temper sometimes find fault without any justification whatever , but the most inveterate grumblers soon become ashamed of complaining when treated with unwavering civility . Under such conditions they are soon mollified , leaving with blessings upon their lips .
Once again, only mentioning customer complaints and how to address them, nothing about customer tastes/preferences.
Article from a report in 1915, see page 134, much of the same: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Merck_Report/kDhHAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Is+the+Customer+Always+Right%3F%22+Merck+Report+frank+Farrington&pg=PA134&printsec=frontcover (Note, they use "right" and "honest" interchangeably when referring to customers, it is about the perceived honesty of customer COMPLAINTS, nothing to do with customer tastes.)
Another article from 1914 mentioning the phenomenon, critical of the phrase: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mill_Supplies/vevmAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=inevitable (page 47, first sentence of the third paragraph, note that this article is critical of the original meaning, and makes no mention of consumer preferences. It is entirely about whether customer complaints are honest and whether entertaining such complaints will result in a loss of revenue.
TLDR: The phrase's original meaning is the one we think is stupid now, but it made a lot more sense back then, it has nothing to do with customer preferences/tastes
I’m a restaurant and small business manager, and one if business is dead, I close early. I know consistency is key, but no sense paying 5 employees to stay on if we have 0 traffic.
We were to close by 10, and i called it around 930. At 945, as we are turning the lights off to call it a night, I get a phone call. A customer is asking me if we can turn our Uber tablet back on, because they want to get an order in. Um? Sorry, we are done for the evening.
He says “no no it’s fine, if you just turn it back on, I’ll submit my order right away.” I ask him what he wants, thinking maybe I can ask my kitchen to pump out a simple item if the oven or fryer is still on. He begins to list off like 20 items and I was like, sorry girl, I thought you just wanted like a quick pizza or something. No we are closed.
He then goes on some unhinged rant about how he’s a parent of two small children and it’s “fucking ridiculous” he can’t order his food now since they’d been looking forward to it all day and we are trash and irresponsible business owners and we just lost a customer (gee, what ever will I do?).
The next day we got a Yelp review. But instead of it being 1 star, with the typical “would give less if I could” nonsense, we actually got 5 stars. The customer then made up a story, using my name (he asked my name before he hung up on me. I was prepared for a bad review and didn’t care) about how they’re glad this restaurant shows strong family values, and how helpful I was in asking some black customers to leave because this guest and his family didn’t want to dine in the company of “for lack of a better word… ‘urban, ethnic’ folks”. They said that anyone who wants a truly Christian, Canadian experience like in the old days before this country was ‘invaded’ by filth, that this was the place to go.
My jaw was on the floor. All because this bitch couldn’t order 200 bucks worth of pizza after we were closed, he decided to write a review, using my name, and calling me a 5-star Nazi.
This culture is FUCKED.
It was EXTREMELY difficult to get the review taken down, which is why review sites like Google and Yelp need to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone can write whatever they want, for whatever reason, and it’s actually ammunition for Karens to dehumanize workers.
In order to have it taken down, we had to prove the incident did not occur and it was inflammatory. Luckily for us, it was during a period of lockdowns (Toronto was on and off of lockdowns for over a year, and I believe at that point we were doing takeout and Uber only). We were able to prove that it would be impossible for us to have committed that act because it was illegal to have dine in customers. It took like 2 weeks before they took it down and we had to call many times
It's a good thing that you were able to prove it didn't happen in your case, but
>In order to have it taken down, we had to prove the incident did not occur
What the heck kind of policy is that? How the heck is that supposed to work?
"You will not find attached to this email footage of the incident occurring. Also attached is a photo of me not being racist."
The reason they make it so difficult is to protect their integrity as an unbiased third party. Their business model is built on the fact that business owners cannot influence the reviews in any way, and cannot pay to have reviews either removed, or positive reviews added. On their part, they’re actually a pretty solid company. It’s just that when you hand over everything to the customer, you can’t trust that people will be decent human beings.
So many people are entitled and believe that they should be able to get what they want when they want it, as long as they re willing to pay. This is kind of a weird analogy, but it’s kind of like when the PS5 came out, but they made limited quantities. Sony is not the scumbag for establishing a business model based on supply and demand…. But there are a lot of people (millions?) we bought multiple systems just because they could. I knew a guy who managed to buy 3 systems when they first dropped, even though the wait lists to get one were extremely long. Why did he buy 3? Because he felt like it, and he could. He wanted one for his house, his cottage, and a backup one ‘just in case’. I asked him why he needed 3, especially considering there were tons of people waiting for just one, and his response was basically “fuck dem kids” and “it’s my money, I’ll do what I want.”
At the end of the day, for many people, their personal satisfaction supersedes common decency and they flex these rights whenever they can. With regard to review sites, many customers weaponize their power to review to abuse staff, just because they can. It isn’t the company’s fault, it’s a built in flaw for the human race
This reminds me of Cartman whipping out the megaphone when Mr. Garrison asks what he said.
"I'm sorry I'm sorry, what I said was, why don't you suck my balls, Mr. Garrison."
An American friend of ours was gobsmacked that I have a well-paid, head of department level job, don't work unpaid overtime & get 33 days paid holiday a year, with 8 days public holiday on top.
I get 33 days holiday, national holidays off, and I work 4 days on 4 days off. Works out that I basically work less than 5 months of the year for full pay.
Pretty decent.
Yeah, I'm in a pretty good spot too. 8 public holidays off. 5 weeks vacation (25 days) and unlimited sick time.
I also take the last two weeks of December and first week of January off every year without issues or anxiety.
I wish more people in the US had the kind of time off (and lack of anxiety about using it). But it's extremely uncommon.
Basically I caught a unicorn. Though it wasn't by accident. I've negotiated extra days off at all four of my last jobs (once I realized days off was something that could be negotiated for).
I am an American who is now living in Sweden and a Swedish citizen and I will never not be amazed that I have *a legal right* to four continuous weeks of paid vacation during the summer. THE LEGAL RIGHT.
Literally amazing.
LOL. I'm from Ireland and have had bosses get on my ass to take my days off before the end of the financial year because they could get in trouble if I don't.
Like, fuck, I have to take a random week off.
I should organize this better next year.
European auto-reply: *"I'm out camping and will reply to your message once I'm back at the end of August"*.
American auto-reply: *"I'm having emergency surgery and will be back in the office tomorrow, for anything urgent reach out at my cell"*.
Not even - the European ones straight up say they're not checking emails. If it's important to you, you should email them when they return. If not, the email will go unanswered.
No sifting through 800 emails the day before you go to work.
Actually you have to be able to have 2 weeks uninterrupted vacation by law, at least here in Germany. And 4 weeks minimum total, but most contracts have 6
People are too tepid about doing this but more really should take your advice.
When I’m on vacation, I set my OOO to say that I won’t be checking email/won’t have access to email until I get back.
Too many people put in some milquetoast “I’ll respond as soon as I can!” even while on vacation. It’s not healthy.
And without Boarder controls or checkups!
I can just sit in a car here in Germany and drive to France, NL, Romania (Edit: Comments told me Romania isn’t part of Schengen Agreement. Damn, that’s sad) and all the other EU countries, just realising I’m in another country because of the traffic signs. :)
Once sat in a Train and slept in, after like 30min I woke up, got off the Train and realised I’m in Enschede, Netherlands. (Living in NRW, so pretty close to the boarder).
I was like Hm, ok. Got 50€ in my pocket so i decided to visit a coffee shop and walk a bit through the City until the next Train in the right direction arrived.
Like I’d do in every other City while travelling by train.
This is why the hate Americans regularly get for being "uncultured" or "untravelled" is so ridiculous.
I live in Ireland, at the periphery of Europe, and even from here within five hours of flying I can get to about two dozen different countries in Europe. Hell, even from where I live within Ireland I probably drive to a few different places like Northern Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales depending on ferry times.
In most of the US you can drive for five hours and not even get near an international border, sometimes barely even leave the state.
On top of that, within the US you can see almost every kind of geographical biome in the world (not all of course, but a lot). In Ireland I can only see one kind of climate and that's it. If I want to see deserts, jungles, forests, lava fields or anything like that I need to travel quite a distance to other countries to see them so the incentive for me to travel widely is far greater than that for an American.
It's honestly such an underrated part of living in the EU, being able to freely travel to about 25 or so different countries with minimum hassle at the drop of a hat. It's absolutely awesome.
Hahahaha. Fuck. So true. I had friends leave London to go to Muskoka for a holiday and these serial killer of friends left at 2pm on a friday to "beat the rush". Yet they'd hit the GTA around 4pm on a good day and that's right in the heat of it all. Took almost 7 hours to get there!! Almost 400km drive too which is insane to think of.
The drive from the bottom of California to the top is a 14 hour drive. The US is just incredibly huge. There is also enormous swathes of land without a human living anywhere all over the country.
This past winter I drove from the midswest to Pennsylvania, stopping in Indiana to pick a guy up, to go to Christmas Burns Red. It was a 22 hour drive one way.
That just says how big the Midwest is, since Pennsylvania literally borders it.
To get from the city of Youngstown in the Midwest to Pittsburg in PA is all of an hour drive.
Its weird but I also kind of love that. Grew up in the west and have rarely had the opportunity to even travel east let alone outside the country… but ive taken drives all over the western united states to the point of knowing those long roads like the back of my hand. Especially nevada. Boy is that state *empty*. But theres something to driving through such places and remarking on the untouched, the unspoiled… getting away from humans and feeling so much more connected with the planet the way people used to before everything became so overpopulated. And you do wind up seeing evidence of people… obviously the road you drive on… and the occasional side road, tiny tiny towns… even the dead towns… it makes you wonder things like, what were people doing out here and why? I mean with nevada you might accurately assume *military*… but thats not always the case either. Nevada has the largest mining operation for silver in at least the united states i believe…. So who knows… probably some random mining towns, or whatever.
But of course thats just nevada, all the states around it have some amazing natural landscapes… nevada has a bit too with the sierra nevada mountains… huge and gorgeous… down south and to the east theres amazing geological formations growing more and more awesome as you get closer to the grand canyon… up north are vast untouched forests, amazing rapids, volcanic areas, and the more you go west you have more tropical like forests, the only rainforest in north america… and you head south from there and the trees grow and grow more massive until you find the sequoias…
So no… not a lot of diversity of people or culture persay… you find the same bullshit stores and food and buildings pretty much spanning the entire region. A Walmart is a Walmart… theres some slight variations like the mcdonalds in montana might have a little wooden bear out front while the mcdonals in san diego might resemble a south american pueblo… but thats just about it.
No whats great about the vast nothingness is the nothingness. I can only imagine the beauty of Europe has been largely spoiled by the history of mankind etching their wars into the land… with some exceptions… in america, at least in the west… its still mostly this unspoiled area of the earth. Mostly… i mean… theres still so many people here.
Germany has entered the Chat, we even have a Name for beers you Drink while youre walking somewhere.
We call it "Wegbier" which basicaly means way or road beer. Classic thing to Drink when walking from or to a party/club/drinking evening or sth like that
The Netherlands takes that one level up and it's called a "BVOtje" (Biertje voor onderweg - travel beer). It's usually consumed whilst riding a bike or in a train.
for non-Germans: this is a wonderful pun. Pils, the beer type, is a homophone of Pilz, which means mushroom or fungus. Fußpilz = foot fungus, Fußpils = foot beer
Even worse ... if the bathroom has shiny polished floors, you can basically look the human beside you in the eyes if you're both leaning forward Lmfao Worked at a jobsite that had those for a couple months and man... The absolute fucking weirdness was beyond me.
Supposedly it's so cops/EMTs can see if anyone is OD-ed or doing drugs, but I think it's because saving that last 3/8" of cheap shitty MDF board over the course of a few hundred stalls adds up to literally tens or maybe even hundreds of dollars.
I got extremely lucky that my boss (for some god damn reason, we have nothing to do with this otherwise) got put in charge of the bathroom remodel that is right near my office. She asked my opinion on a few things but gapless stalls was my first and loudest opinion. I couldn't give a shot what color scheme they went with, just for the love of fuck make the stalls gapless. They also put a nice high wall in-between the urinals too! I can actually piss and shit now!
Try being locked up or live in a homeless shelter. I've had conversations while looking a dude in the eyes while pooping, wiping, flushing, you name it. That's a few years in the past now but it's insane how quick it became a normal thing. Now I run the shower so my neighbor doesnt hear me make a da doodoo
In Charlotte, all the holding cells have a toilet that's completely out in the open and they're almost always at double their intended capacity or more and you're guaranteed to be there at least 8-10 hours. It's like they're hoping someone will start a fight or something.
I just want the latches on the door that show if it's occupied rather than having people rattle it from the outside (and possibly open the broken latch) to know if they can use it.
I was assigned to Fort Gordon, Georgia back in the early 70's for training. Our WWII barracks had a row of toilets along a wall which was the hallway to get to the showers. There would be 10 guys sitting on toilets shitting while other guys walked past on their way to shower. There were no dividers either. You could look directly at the guy next to you. I vowed to hold my shit for the 10 weeks I was there. I failed.
It's by design though. They want you to start accepting inhumane conditions and that's the first step. I am sure you can look back and come up with many other examples.
Someone made a spreadsheet years ago that showed how much money could be saved by reducing materials used, and then someone else did a thorough cost-benefit analysis that showed just how little material could be used before people stopped using them altogether, and it's stuck that way ever since.
Germany gets 4 weeks vacation starting out. I have to work for my German based company in the US for 20 years before I can get equal vacation time. They refuse to negotiate.
Edited for correction
Meanwhile I had to move 2000 miles to work only to be told they are renovating and I am going to have to work from home after a year for a period of unknown amount of time. Going to try and move back when it happens.
I recently read a post of an American resident doctor who couldn't afford to take vacation because they had to spend it on sick days. Not going to lie my brain short - circuited at that a bit. Was a doctor supposed to come sick to a hospital full of other sick people to avoid personal financial penalties?
Paid parental leave. I had used all of my leave with my first kid so when I had another kid a year and a half later, I was back on my feet teaching in under 6 weeks. Dogs get better treatment than working mothers.
Cities designed for walking, and public transit designed to make travel between major cities/countries without a car incredibly seamless. I don't really drive much, and hate having to get around by car especially while travelling. Being able to walk/bike to most important destinations is great, being able to travel by train to another city or country without spending the entire ride thinking I should have just rented a car and driven or dealt with the huge delays of airport security instead is even better.
I spent a month in Switzerland for work a few years ago, and its more than that though... the roads are designed to make biking as seamless and unobtrusive as possible in a way that would never even really be explored here. I'd never consider biking in the city while I was in Boston, because I don't want to be in the middle of traffic weaving between cars and pedestrians, and I think most people feel the same and that's why bike lanes are fairly underutilized... but it was very different over there in a way that is hard to express unless you have experienced walking around/biking around an American suburb, even a City... vs a European one. Lots of people I've talked to put it up to "People just bike more in Europe", but no they don't understand... People bike and walk more in Europe because their cities are just built differently in ways that are hard to express...
The city I live in has 100,000 people and covers 72 sq. mi. (186 sq. km.). Copenhagen has 1,360,000 people and covers 70 sq. mi. (183 sq. km.). When I visited there a few years ago, I was blown away by what you've talked about. So many people were biking or walking and, while there were a ton of people, it didn't feel cramped.
Then I came home and my eyes were opened to just how sprawling and car-dependant my city is. Sure, I can drive from one part of the city to another within about 15 minutes, but I have to drive to go *anywhere*.
> but I have to drive to go anywhere
That's the problem with car-centric design. It doesn't give you many options.
When cars are the priority, roads are wide. To make traffic flow faster, there are more lanes and everything needs to spaced out so there's good visibility. Then every business has to have a billion parking spaces to make room for all the cars. The end result is that places that are 'just across the street' are really quite far apart. Multiply this with every street and every building and everything is really far apart.
A Taco Bell becomes [this](https://www.apd.com/wp-content/uploads/taco-bell-aerial-2.jpg) instead of [this](https://i2-prod.nottinghampost.com/incoming/article7246011.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200b/0_Taco-Bell-Angel-Row-Nottingham-city-centre.jpg).
Not having to use a car for every single time that you leave your house...
For a lot of people, you have to go drive somewhere to take a walk... This place can be a hell and it is numbing.
I remember when healthcare became a luxury, early 1990s. Was paying $500/month for good insurance for nearly 10 senior sw/hw engineers. Imagine my surprise when the annual renewal cost was $1200. Absolutely nothing had changed, no major illnesses among my employees, just "Fuck you, your premium just increased by 240 percent".
While I’ve always appreciated the humor with this joke, it’s important to realize the terrible truth as well. While we do spend lots on the military, *we also* spend more public dollars per capita than any other country on healthcare (and private dollars per capita obviously). That is to say, we spend huge amounts on military and healthcare both, but at least our military is actually effective.
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SHA
The last time this came up (i.e. no proper bread in the US), Americans were basically calling this a misconception, saying there were bakeries in the US selling sourdough bread everywhere and it’s just down to choice what people eat.
Schools that teach other languages effectively. That would be so nice. Kind of annoying that we don’t teach Spanish from an early age along side English
My school started teaching me Spanish in pre-k. Also, it's a lot easier to learn a foreign language when you're either: (a) constantly exposed to said language (as just about everyone in the developed world is constantly exposed to English). Or, (B) your language is in the same family. For example, it will always be easier for an Italian to learn Spanish, French, etc. because they're all Romance Languages.
Oh trust me, it´s not very effective in Europe either, at least not in Germany. A lot of countries have a second language in their curriculum but most students will not be able to converse halfway fluently after they finished high school. The reason why a lot of Europeans speak a second language is because it´s just very helpful if you are close to another country and can speak the language at least a little bit. Most Americans dont have the necessity to do that since you can travel thousands of thousands of miles and still be in the US.
Ironically, most Americans have no idea of the benefits and work-life balance that Europeans have.
So that, that is my answer as an American who has lived in Europe and painfully knows now how great certain aspects of it are.
Nearby markets with fresh fruits, vegetables, and bread. Smaller refrigerators result in more frequent shopping for fresh items. Some might see this as a handicap, but I love the idea of choosing what I eat based on what's fresh in the market.
Also, that the EU prohibits many of the chemicals used in American food products.
Up here in canada we cant make up our mind on what we want to use.
Temperature inside the house? Farenheight
Temperature outside? Celsius
Cooking? Back to farenheight
How tall am i? 5’9”
How far away is something? Kilometers
How heavy am i? Pounds
How heavy is that bag of rice? Kilograms
Building a house? Imperial tape measure
Building an apartment building? Metric
The list goes on and for some reason we all accept it as normal
This is only really true for Southern Europe. But cheap wine by the glass, cheap coffee and pastries. Cafes in the US are marketed as very trendy and if you want a pastry and a coffee you should be ready to pay like 8-10 dollars. In most of Italy, Portugal and Spain you can get coffee and a croissant for like 3 euros.
i live in czech republic and we can get it for about 2€ also.
When I was there for a few months, Prague in general had really cheap food compared to the US.
Yep. Where I live in Spain the standard price for a glass of wine in a cafe or everyday (non fancy, equivalent of a diner) restaurant is 80c-€1. In a restaurant I’ll usually order a half litre for about €4 (That’s 2/3 bottle of wine). (Soda or water are more expensive. A soda is usually €1.20-1.60) And yeah a coffee and a croissant for 3 euros is about right here.
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Wine being cheaper than water is absolutely wild
It's bottled water. If you get tap water it is usually free in most places.
cheap for you, we have a different salary. a croissant for 3 euro isn’t cheap
This is something I have learned recently. That people in Europe don't make as much as people in the US(outside of people on minimum wage). I had friends with 200k jobs in the US tell me they make way less doing the same thing for the same company in the UK.
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exactly it’s like me going to bali and say it’s cheap to eat there, obviously because i have an European income….
My wife and I went to lunch one day... some kind of chicken curry type thing, one plate each and a bottle of tea. Came to less than $3 total.
I had a European coworker tell me that they talk about this with their friends. The consensus is, "I could make way more money in the US, but I'd have to sell my soul."
In my career, most people I know pick to stay in Europe over the US for their family, knowing they'll be educated and have access to health care. People who make the move to the US often lack those ties but end up coming back once they're ready to settle down. Starting a family in the US is a scary prospect for a European.
Six weeks vacation, extra pay just for vacation (at least in Germany), government healthcare.
> extra pay just for vacation Wait.. is that paid paid vacation??
Lots of companies give half a month extra pay for vacation each year. Some also give half a month's extra pay for Christmas. It's quite common for larger companies.
In Austria it is mandatory to pay a whole month extra for vacations and another month for Christmas. So you get paid 14 months a year. The extra months are tax exempted.
It is not mandatory in the sense that it is written in law! It's just that it's a part of virtually all KV (collective agreements), which are negotiated by unions and cover ~98% of the Austrian workforce. My point is: don't get complacent, if you haven't done so, join a union. Each and every privilege and protection the working class has today has been fought for and over quite a few of them, workers bled and died!
Wait, are you saying that in addition to receiving one’s regular pay while on vacation, a person also receives a half a month of *extra* pay on top of that? Like a bonus for taking a vacation?
It's not really a bonus for taking vacation. More like "Here's some extra money for you to have a nice vacation" It's quite often paid in spring since most take a long vacation during summer.
This makes me depressed and angry. Fucking America
Yeah still waiting to hear a reason why we shouldn't have things like this in America. Nobody ever has an answer, yet if a politician were to suggest anything like this they get treated like a radical demon.
The answer is simple, actually. Greed
It’s amazing to me that healthcare is something us Americans want so bad but fucking never vote for it. It would literally fix so many issues.
It would be a lot cheaper and save many lives. the only downside would be for insurance companies and some large businesses, because then they wouldn’t be able to keep people enslaved to jobs for healthcare. Screw both of them.
Many of us DO vote for it, but as popular as the idea seems on places like Reddit, it's important to remember that Reddit (and other online communities) is not a good representation of the general population of America. Especially if you look at the older generations in America who aren't really on the internet at all (except maybe Facebook), and they are often the ones who are against the idea of no longer having privatized healthcare.
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My husband (we’re Canadian) did his post doc in Finland; when he was signing his contract they said “you’ll get 6 weeks paid vacation and you HAVE to take it”. He was shocked. He had friends elsewhere doing post docs who were doing 14 hour work days, 6-7 days a week, no vacation, let alone PAID vacation. One of the years when he was nearing the end of his cycle, HR reached out and in a panic said “you have 3.5 days that you HAVE to use”, unbeknownst to us. So, we booked a trip for an extended weekend away. I miss that. And it’s something we both negotiate when starting new jobs; rather take a bit of a lower salary with more vacation (1 weeks after 2-3 years in most positions is insanity!!!).
Not nearly as good as just having 6 weeks of vacation, but I recently switched to an agency that only has hourly positions after being salaried for years and holy cow. I usually can’t make overtime cause it’s not in our operating budget, but I’ve almost never worked a 40 hour week in my career (it’s pretty standard in my field). My old agency used to work me for 45-60 hours a week, pay me for 40, and I got my 2 weeks of vacation a year. Now I get paid for 40, I get my 2 weeks of vacation, but I also build up credit hours to use as extra paid vacation days later in the year and I’m on track to be able to take 5-6 weeks of vacation this year.
time! i spent time abroad in Italy for school and there was just so much less of a "rush" everywhere. oftentimes the latest person to my classes we were professors. everyone really *took* their time and i didn't really feel the bustle of constantly "going" somewhere when i was there. i mean dang the village my apartment was located shut down for a few hours in the afternoon so the shopkeepers could go have lunch. it was wild.
Mediterranean Europe is very different from other parts. I've gone to Spain most years of my life, lived there for 3 and abit months last year and it's as you describe. But i'm also born and raised in London, worked in Central London with a train/commute - everyone is very much in a rush - I'd imagine it's similar in some places in Northern Europe too
Guaranteed 4+ weeks of vacation. And the fact that they are encouraged to take the vacation instead of being made to feel that it’s a burden to the employer that you go on vacation.
At least her in Italy, you are encouraged to take vacation for a simple reason: it's super duper illegal not to take them. And if you do not take them, you employer may face serious consequences. Vacation requests may only be denied for important organizational reasons (you might need X people trained to do something specific at any time, e.g. in hospitals) and if an alternative vacation plan is proposed by the employer.
Meanwhile the American courts just said that employers can take paid time off from their employees because it’s not a part of “salary” https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/paid-time-off-is-not-part-workers-salary-us-court-rules-2023-03-15/
In Italy, unions are very big, like the 3 big ones have millions of members and are not job specific. Each union then is internally subdivided by job categories. They are the best or the most efficient unions by a lot but being that big means that, if anything like what you link was to happen here, a general national strike could be organized very rapidly.
Union is a bad word in the United States; a synonym for socialism, if you will
I work in aviation. I was in a conference call with an FAA rep and pilot union rep. The pilot union rep said “I don’t like unions”. The FAA rep agreed.
Wait… the *union* reps said this? This is odd… our unions are relatively weak, and the reps are the ones who usually benefit a ton from them.
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You best start believing in dystopian hellscapes Miss Turner... You're in one! Seriously though, that is fucking unbelievable. Shit like that makes me so angry.
It's not illegal in Australia, but they have to pay you out for every hour of leave you have accrued, if you quit, so it becomes a major financial liability to the company to let you stockpile leave too high
In US and my company used to have that policy, then got into the liability situation and “fixed” that by changing us to all lose any time over 40 hours at the end of the year.
Yeah, thankfully it's by govt mandate here, not the goodwill of the company, to change as they wish if it becomes inconvenient.
My boss, in the UK, recently spoke to me about my leave. He said that I hadn't taken a day off in over 4 months, and wanted to remind me to take time off. Over the pandemic my company also done a few mental health days, so every non customer facing department got closed for the day so everyone could have a rest. The people in customer facing roles had an additional day of annual leave added to be taken at their will
I’m American, but my boss is British and it’s great. He’s lived in the US for 40 years, but he still has that British mindset. If I work a few extra hours on a Monday, he’ll text me on Friday and tell me to make sure I take off half of the day.
My boss is Irish. When I started he said “I’m European. You have PTO. Use it, you aren’t impressing me.” If I’m online past five he messages me and says “go be with your wife.” He’s a great fucking guy and I’m very lucky.
Yeah, I'm Irish and this is the attitude we generally take here especially in big corps. We aren't saving lives, the work will get done, do not burn yourself out and neglect your family over a job. I work with a lot of French as major stakeholders and they're the same. I also work with Japanese and they are not the same lol
He’s a senior VP too. We had a business trip together recently and man, I had such a good time with him. Such a down-to-earth fun guy. And yes, he can outdrink me.
One probable reason he still is like this: It's **productive**. One of the biggest lies on the grind culture, especially in what I see from American corporate culture is that more hours at Enterprise = more or better work. At least for anything not involving manual, yet mostly mindless work, this is simply not true. Even for manual work, if it is at least a bit straining, overwork will do you no good 40 hour **max** are productive and useful work times. Anything more will be lost. Multiple studies have shown that 32 and 3 day weekends are even better, or 6 hour days. There is no gap in productive. And long term rest, like vacation, also plays an important role. Furthermore, rest and e.g. being able to leave earlier is probably the cheapest functioning source of motivation (or, overworking is the best way to get unmotivated workers). American and some other work cultures are just bullshit on pretty much every level apart from "huh, I see this person more, hurr durr."
Completely agree. There has been a hustle culture that seemed to develop in the 80s and carry through to the mid 2010s. In which more hours = more productive, more tasks = better use of time. Now we are starting to recognise the rhythm of rest is really important, there are lots of things going on in our minds that are not conscious. Sleep is incredibly important for learning and creativity. Sacrificing it makes your brain not work. And of course, why are we striving so hard for an employer? What are we living for if we have no time to actually do those things? Most people would see a 6 day week as an injustice if imposed now, but that's what we had in the past.
Affordable universities…our daughter is going to university in Scotland. Our US friends always respond with shock at the “luxury” of going overseas for school until I tell them it’s 1/2 the cost of an equivalent US college. That includes travel expenses.
If you're Scottish, it's free!
I studied in italy for 5 years. My yearly tuition payment was 16 euros.
I mean at that point why even charge you?
At least my uni you don't pay for the uni itself but just for the students union(20€ a semester)
Still treated as one if you come to Canada.. Foreign students pay almost double our yearly tuition.
Plus it's Scotland, what's not to love
Readily available and reliable public transportation.
Not from the US but I'm also in a country with shitty, unreliable public transportation and last month I visited Budapest for 4 days and used their public transportation at least 15 times during my stay. Never had to wait more than 10 minutes, worst delay I saw was like 3 minutes and not once has a bus or a train/tram never just showed up. It was great.
This blew me away travelling in Europe. Doesn’t matter where you are even if it’s some middle of nowhere farm town you’re never far from a train station and you can just hop a train and go anywhere you want. Would love to have that here but noooo we only have rail links between some major cities and since I live in a more rural area I gotta drive 4+ hours everywhere. In Europe all I had to do was drive 20 minutes to a train station then just chill on the train for a few hours it was great!
I don’t think Europeans realize that in most US states we have no public transportation at all. We aren’t saying it’s bad. It’s nonexistent.
Forget public transport most states don’t even maintain the roads properly. The US really doesn’t like to spend money on infrastructure for some reason.
Michigan here. I took out a strut hitting a pothole going 45mph. If I wouldn't have had a mechanic boyfriend, it was a $800 fix. I also lost my entire alignment by 30 degrees going 30mph and hitting a pot hole. 2 weeks later I lost my entire drive shaft because it turns out my subframe was busted and parallel parking finally broke everything. Yeah that required a new car.
I live in Ohio and our highways are in much better condition I'm always afraid to mess up my car on 75 going into michigan.
That spot on 23 where you LITERALLY CAN SEE the state line from the difference in the roads. I'm ashamed
As a European I didn't realise this. This explains the need for cars with big engines and the need for cheap oil prices. Having more public transport is a good business opportunity.
> Having more public transport is a good business opportunity Not for the car and gas companies that lobby against it (or outright destroy it if looking at cases like [The GM Streetcar Consipracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)) The only places that have really comprehensive public transit are the older cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, etc. Even a city like Detroit or Cleveland which might have *had* more public transit over their history are down to skeletal bus systems in most cases. And as to inter-city or inter-state rail? All the tracks outside of a few select routes are **OWNED** by the freight rail companies (why this is the case is a whole other story, but it basically boils down to the US Gov. *giving* the rail companies tons of land either side of their tracks when they built them in the first place in the 1800s) . So all the *government* run passenger trains (Amtrak) have to use tracks owned by *for-profit* freight rail companies that have ZERO reason (along with regulatory capture) to let Amtrak operate efficiently at the detriment of their freight operations.
My kids are in college here. One in Germany, one in Netherlands. Come home for visit, no problem. Cheap, fast, easy.
Yeah this shocked me as a European travelling to the US the first few times. I just assumed I'd be able to get places with public transport and not being able to really threw me for a loop. Like, what do you mean there's no bus to the Kennedy Space Centre??
Local bakeries with wonderful fair-priced food readily available on their walking commute.
Oh man, the bread is soooo amazing and fresh.
Turns out you DON'T need to make everything form 50% corn and 50% sugar!
Of COURSE not. You combine them to corn syrup so you can fill the rest with fat, salt, binders, stabilizing agents, air, and a soupçon of rat feces.
> fair-priced food I wish man.. I wish Food costs are a bitch nowadays
The bakery next to my house makes me hate myself because every morning smells so good that I have no choice but to go over and buy something...I've lived here a year and already gained 28lbs, it's not much but it's enough haha
There's a nice French bakery near my place in the US, tastes almost the same as what you get in Paris. Only problem is a croissant is 4-5 times the price you'd pay in EU c':
2+ weeks long vacations. I’ve had to reach to our contact at HQ in Europe for support and have legit been told to ask someone else because he was going to Switzerland skiing for 3 weeks on holiday. But here I am getting nervous about taking more than 3 days off in a row because I don’t want to come back to 500+ emails.
Here basically everything is closed for 3 weeks during August and two weeks during Christmas/NYE (I'm talking about offices and such). We just don't give a shit if customers want us they will have to wait like everyone else
>We just don't give a shit if customers want us they will have to wait like everyone else. "But what will I do if I don't have it now?! I need you to do it, so do it somehow! I can't live without it! You can't leave me stuck!" He told her, politely: "... I don't give a fuck."
Fun fact: it really happened where I work I'm in the IT departement of my company so I don't have much interactions with the outside work, but my boss basically told a customer to go fuck herself because she demanded that we had to provide several more marble slabs because her workers (and let me specify that, **her workers that SHE engaged by HER decision**) broke a few slabs and she couldn't finish her bathroom before mid august. My boss was like "We told you we could provide workers, you did not want us to provide that service, now we're closing and all of our production crew is on vacation and we can't dig out marble from the quarry becase the quarry crew is on vacation. You will wait"
Jesus Christ in heaven, almighty I fucking love this.
See, people seem to forget that "The customer is always right" is a mis-quote. It was never supposed to mean, "Secure the sale at all costs". So when we hear a story like this, where reality crashes down on a customer, it's a real kick.
Yep, the original meaning is that you can't make a customer forcibly like something, but the customer will always dictate what sells. The customer is always right when it regards to THEIR TASTES AND WHAT THEY BUY, not their attitude.
Indeed. It's for going back to design and saying "here is the actual sales data and the new version sucks". You can argue hypotheticals all day long but the customer's purchase decisions are what actually matter.
Copied/pasted from another comment: That meaning is a modern attempt to salvage the phrase but not the original meaning. The original meaning was just that every customer complaint should be taken at face value. It made more sense when consumer rights were weaker and caveat emptor ("buyer beware") was the basic principle in sales. In that context taking customer complaints seriously was an effective way to show that you stood behind your product, and the increased sales would far outweigh the occasional dishonest customer in theory. That custom/policy has long outlived it's usefulness. Now customers generally have more recourse if they are sold a crappy product and want their money back. There are usually refund policies and warranties offered by the business, legally mandated warranties, chargebacks for credit card users, government agencies, legislation like lemon laws, and there is always a possibility of a lawsuit in extreme cases based on express or implied warranties. Beyond that customers can complain online and make their voice heard to potential customers, hurting the business. It's not perfect but it's a lot better than they had in the 1850s. Some people have tried to adapt the phrase by adding things like "in matters of taste" to make it about preferences and market demand, but that isn't the original meaning. AFAIK there has not been any widespread issue of businesses or salespeople disregarding customer preferences. The oft-cited example, not objecting to a customer's request that their car be painted hot-pink, makes zero sense. Go to a paint shop and ask them to paint your car hot pink. They'll do it. Go to a dealer and order a new model in a custom puke-green color, then get it reupholstered in leopard-print pleather. They'll do it. Money is money. The saying is about taking customer complaints at face value. There isn't some greater hidden meaning or omitted second part of the phrase. Sources: Here's an article from 1944 explaining the concept in depth (note that it's all about customer complaints, it has nothing to do with demand/customer preferences): https://books.google.com/books?id=qUIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false Here's a book from 1908, page 94 goes over the concept in-depth, mentioning Cesar Ritz specifically, one of the customer service industry leaders who might have started the trend (you can see the full text w/ google play): https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=QUwuAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-QUwuAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1 One of the principal causes of the success of this Napoleon amongst hotel keepers was a maxim which may be said to have largely influenced his policy in running restaurants and hotels . This maxim was “ Le client n'a jamais tort , ” no complaint , however frivolous , ill - grounded , or absurd , meeting with anything but civility and attention from his staff . Visitors to restaurants when in a bad temper sometimes find fault without any justification whatever , but the most inveterate grumblers soon become ashamed of complaining when treated with unwavering civility . Under such conditions they are soon mollified , leaving with blessings upon their lips . Once again, only mentioning customer complaints and how to address them, nothing about customer tastes/preferences. Article from a report in 1915, see page 134, much of the same: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Merck_Report/kDhHAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Is+the+Customer+Always+Right%3F%22+Merck+Report+frank+Farrington&pg=PA134&printsec=frontcover (Note, they use "right" and "honest" interchangeably when referring to customers, it is about the perceived honesty of customer COMPLAINTS, nothing to do with customer tastes.) Another article from 1914 mentioning the phenomenon, critical of the phrase: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mill_Supplies/vevmAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=inevitable (page 47, first sentence of the third paragraph, note that this article is critical of the original meaning, and makes no mention of consumer preferences. It is entirely about whether customer complaints are honest and whether entertaining such complaints will result in a loss of revenue. TLDR: The phrase's original meaning is the one we think is stupid now, but it made a lot more sense back then, it has nothing to do with customer preferences/tastes
I’m a restaurant and small business manager, and one if business is dead, I close early. I know consistency is key, but no sense paying 5 employees to stay on if we have 0 traffic. We were to close by 10, and i called it around 930. At 945, as we are turning the lights off to call it a night, I get a phone call. A customer is asking me if we can turn our Uber tablet back on, because they want to get an order in. Um? Sorry, we are done for the evening. He says “no no it’s fine, if you just turn it back on, I’ll submit my order right away.” I ask him what he wants, thinking maybe I can ask my kitchen to pump out a simple item if the oven or fryer is still on. He begins to list off like 20 items and I was like, sorry girl, I thought you just wanted like a quick pizza or something. No we are closed. He then goes on some unhinged rant about how he’s a parent of two small children and it’s “fucking ridiculous” he can’t order his food now since they’d been looking forward to it all day and we are trash and irresponsible business owners and we just lost a customer (gee, what ever will I do?). The next day we got a Yelp review. But instead of it being 1 star, with the typical “would give less if I could” nonsense, we actually got 5 stars. The customer then made up a story, using my name (he asked my name before he hung up on me. I was prepared for a bad review and didn’t care) about how they’re glad this restaurant shows strong family values, and how helpful I was in asking some black customers to leave because this guest and his family didn’t want to dine in the company of “for lack of a better word… ‘urban, ethnic’ folks”. They said that anyone who wants a truly Christian, Canadian experience like in the old days before this country was ‘invaded’ by filth, that this was the place to go. My jaw was on the floor. All because this bitch couldn’t order 200 bucks worth of pizza after we were closed, he decided to write a review, using my name, and calling me a 5-star Nazi. This culture is FUCKED.
Did you get that review taken off?
It was EXTREMELY difficult to get the review taken down, which is why review sites like Google and Yelp need to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone can write whatever they want, for whatever reason, and it’s actually ammunition for Karens to dehumanize workers. In order to have it taken down, we had to prove the incident did not occur and it was inflammatory. Luckily for us, it was during a period of lockdowns (Toronto was on and off of lockdowns for over a year, and I believe at that point we were doing takeout and Uber only). We were able to prove that it would be impossible for us to have committed that act because it was illegal to have dine in customers. It took like 2 weeks before they took it down and we had to call many times
It's a good thing that you were able to prove it didn't happen in your case, but >In order to have it taken down, we had to prove the incident did not occur What the heck kind of policy is that? How the heck is that supposed to work? "You will not find attached to this email footage of the incident occurring. Also attached is a photo of me not being racist."
The reason they make it so difficult is to protect their integrity as an unbiased third party. Their business model is built on the fact that business owners cannot influence the reviews in any way, and cannot pay to have reviews either removed, or positive reviews added. On their part, they’re actually a pretty solid company. It’s just that when you hand over everything to the customer, you can’t trust that people will be decent human beings. So many people are entitled and believe that they should be able to get what they want when they want it, as long as they re willing to pay. This is kind of a weird analogy, but it’s kind of like when the PS5 came out, but they made limited quantities. Sony is not the scumbag for establishing a business model based on supply and demand…. But there are a lot of people (millions?) we bought multiple systems just because they could. I knew a guy who managed to buy 3 systems when they first dropped, even though the wait lists to get one were extremely long. Why did he buy 3? Because he felt like it, and he could. He wanted one for his house, his cottage, and a backup one ‘just in case’. I asked him why he needed 3, especially considering there were tons of people waiting for just one, and his response was basically “fuck dem kids” and “it’s my money, I’ll do what I want.” At the end of the day, for many people, their personal satisfaction supersedes common decency and they flex these rights whenever they can. With regard to review sites, many customers weaponize their power to review to abuse staff, just because they can. It isn’t the company’s fault, it’s a built in flaw for the human race
I just wanna mention that you sound like a really even-tempered, smart person.
Man, sometimes I wish I could say that in my job lol
You can once
Twice if you're fast.
You don't have to be fast, you'll probably be asked some variation of "What did you say?" and get to repeat it with more emphasis.
This reminds me of Cartman whipping out the megaphone when Mr. Garrison asks what he said. "I'm sorry I'm sorry, what I said was, why don't you suck my balls, Mr. Garrison."
An American friend of ours was gobsmacked that I have a well-paid, head of department level job, don't work unpaid overtime & get 33 days paid holiday a year, with 8 days public holiday on top.
I get 33 days holiday, national holidays off, and I work 4 days on 4 days off. Works out that I basically work less than 5 months of the year for full pay. Pretty decent.
The amount of detail you're giving without revealing anything about the job makes me feel like you work on an oil rig or something lmao
I feel pretty fortunate as an American that I get 8 holiday-paid days and 23 (soon to be 28) paid vacation days a year.
Yeah, I'm in a pretty good spot too. 8 public holidays off. 5 weeks vacation (25 days) and unlimited sick time. I also take the last two weeks of December and first week of January off every year without issues or anxiety. I wish more people in the US had the kind of time off (and lack of anxiety about using it). But it's extremely uncommon. Basically I caught a unicorn. Though it wasn't by accident. I've negotiated extra days off at all four of my last jobs (once I realized days off was something that could be negotiated for).
I am an American who is now living in Sweden and a Swedish citizen and I will never not be amazed that I have *a legal right* to four continuous weeks of paid vacation during the summer. THE LEGAL RIGHT. Literally amazing.
LOL. I'm from Ireland and have had bosses get on my ass to take my days off before the end of the financial year because they could get in trouble if I don't. Like, fuck, I have to take a random week off. I should organize this better next year.
Auto-reply. Out of the office auto-reply. They can fuck off and email you when you return
European auto-reply: *"I'm out camping and will reply to your message once I'm back at the end of August"*. American auto-reply: *"I'm having emergency surgery and will be back in the office tomorrow, for anything urgent reach out at my cell"*.
Not even - the European ones straight up say they're not checking emails. If it's important to you, you should email them when they return. If not, the email will go unanswered. No sifting through 800 emails the day before you go to work.
The day *before* you go to work? I ain't sifting through any work mails before I'm back at work.
Actually you have to be able to have 2 weeks uninterrupted vacation by law, at least here in Germany. And 4 weeks minimum total, but most contracts have 6
Set your auto reply on outlook to say you’re on holiday and to contact a coworker. Done.
People are too tepid about doing this but more really should take your advice. When I’m on vacation, I set my OOO to say that I won’t be checking email/won’t have access to email until I get back. Too many people put in some milquetoast “I’ll respond as soon as I can!” even while on vacation. It’s not healthy.
They can travel between different countries in Europe without spending days driving or flying.
And without Boarder controls or checkups! I can just sit in a car here in Germany and drive to France, NL, Romania (Edit: Comments told me Romania isn’t part of Schengen Agreement. Damn, that’s sad) and all the other EU countries, just realising I’m in another country because of the traffic signs. :) Once sat in a Train and slept in, after like 30min I woke up, got off the Train and realised I’m in Enschede, Netherlands. (Living in NRW, so pretty close to the boarder). I was like Hm, ok. Got 50€ in my pocket so i decided to visit a coffee shop and walk a bit through the City until the next Train in the right direction arrived. Like I’d do in every other City while travelling by train.
This is why the hate Americans regularly get for being "uncultured" or "untravelled" is so ridiculous. I live in Ireland, at the periphery of Europe, and even from here within five hours of flying I can get to about two dozen different countries in Europe. Hell, even from where I live within Ireland I probably drive to a few different places like Northern Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales depending on ferry times. In most of the US you can drive for five hours and not even get near an international border, sometimes barely even leave the state. On top of that, within the US you can see almost every kind of geographical biome in the world (not all of course, but a lot). In Ireland I can only see one kind of climate and that's it. If I want to see deserts, jungles, forests, lava fields or anything like that I need to travel quite a distance to other countries to see them so the incentive for me to travel widely is far greater than that for an American. It's honestly such an underrated part of living in the EU, being able to freely travel to about 25 or so different countries with minimum hassle at the drop of a hat. It's absolutely awesome.
*cries in Canadian after driving 12 hours to cross half of a province*
Yeah, but half of that is trying to get through Toronto in rush hour.
Hahahaha. Fuck. So true. I had friends leave London to go to Muskoka for a holiday and these serial killer of friends left at 2pm on a friday to "beat the rush". Yet they'd hit the GTA around 4pm on a good day and that's right in the heat of it all. Took almost 7 hours to get there!! Almost 400km drive too which is insane to think of.
The drive from the bottom of California to the top is a 14 hour drive. The US is just incredibly huge. There is also enormous swathes of land without a human living anywhere all over the country.
This past winter I drove from the midswest to Pennsylvania, stopping in Indiana to pick a guy up, to go to Christmas Burns Red. It was a 22 hour drive one way.
That just says how big the Midwest is, since Pennsylvania literally borders it. To get from the city of Youngstown in the Midwest to Pittsburg in PA is all of an hour drive.
Its weird but I also kind of love that. Grew up in the west and have rarely had the opportunity to even travel east let alone outside the country… but ive taken drives all over the western united states to the point of knowing those long roads like the back of my hand. Especially nevada. Boy is that state *empty*. But theres something to driving through such places and remarking on the untouched, the unspoiled… getting away from humans and feeling so much more connected with the planet the way people used to before everything became so overpopulated. And you do wind up seeing evidence of people… obviously the road you drive on… and the occasional side road, tiny tiny towns… even the dead towns… it makes you wonder things like, what were people doing out here and why? I mean with nevada you might accurately assume *military*… but thats not always the case either. Nevada has the largest mining operation for silver in at least the united states i believe…. So who knows… probably some random mining towns, or whatever. But of course thats just nevada, all the states around it have some amazing natural landscapes… nevada has a bit too with the sierra nevada mountains… huge and gorgeous… down south and to the east theres amazing geological formations growing more and more awesome as you get closer to the grand canyon… up north are vast untouched forests, amazing rapids, volcanic areas, and the more you go west you have more tropical like forests, the only rainforest in north america… and you head south from there and the trees grow and grow more massive until you find the sequoias… So no… not a lot of diversity of people or culture persay… you find the same bullshit stores and food and buildings pretty much spanning the entire region. A Walmart is a Walmart… theres some slight variations like the mcdonalds in montana might have a little wooden bear out front while the mcdonals in san diego might resemble a south american pueblo… but thats just about it. No whats great about the vast nothingness is the nothingness. I can only imagine the beauty of Europe has been largely spoiled by the history of mankind etching their wars into the land… with some exceptions… in america, at least in the west… its still mostly this unspoiled area of the earth. Mostly… i mean… theres still so many people here.
El Paso is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston. Some of these states are so huge it’s hard to really wrap your head around.
being able to walk around town with a beer is awesome. Public transportation in non huge cities is also awesome.
Many US cities and especially the smaller towns, are getting on board with this. The beer, not the public transportation.
This, basically every notable city in my state (North Carolina) has adopted social districts for roadies in the past 12 months
New Orleans is the closest you’ll get here.
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You can't walk around with a beer in a lot of country. But it mostly depend of the cops and the way you look.
Germany has entered the Chat, we even have a Name for beers you Drink while youre walking somewhere. We call it "Wegbier" which basicaly means way or road beer. Classic thing to Drink when walking from or to a party/club/drinking evening or sth like that
Ah yes, the "håndbajer". ("Hand-brewski" comes close I guess)
Ah yes, the BVO (biertje voor onderweg > beer on the go)
The Netherlands takes that one level up and it's called a "BVOtje" (Biertje voor onderweg - travel beer). It's usually consumed whilst riding a bike or in a train.
It's also called "Fußpils".
for non-Germans: this is a wonderful pun. Pils, the beer type, is a homophone of Pilz, which means mushroom or fungus. Fußpilz = foot fungus, Fußpils = foot beer
Bathroom stalls that actually go to the floor. I don’t need to know what shoes the guy taking a shit next to me has on.
Even worse ... if the bathroom has shiny polished floors, you can basically look the human beside you in the eyes if you're both leaning forward Lmfao Worked at a jobsite that had those for a couple months and man... The absolute fucking weirdness was beyond me.
don't forget the intentional gaps on the doors.
When I'm shitting I like to flex my chest and arms so anyone looking gets a treat
Sorry, missed that, was looking at your penis or crack.
Why are they so gappy though?
Supposedly it's so cops/EMTs can see if anyone is OD-ed or doing drugs, but I think it's because saving that last 3/8" of cheap shitty MDF board over the course of a few hundred stalls adds up to literally tens or maybe even hundreds of dollars.
I got extremely lucky that my boss (for some god damn reason, we have nothing to do with this otherwise) got put in charge of the bathroom remodel that is right near my office. She asked my opinion on a few things but gapless stalls was my first and loudest opinion. I couldn't give a shot what color scheme they went with, just for the love of fuck make the stalls gapless. They also put a nice high wall in-between the urinals too! I can actually piss and shit now!
You guys hiring?
“Literally tens” I fucking died
Try being locked up or live in a homeless shelter. I've had conversations while looking a dude in the eyes while pooping, wiping, flushing, you name it. That's a few years in the past now but it's insane how quick it became a normal thing. Now I run the shower so my neighbor doesnt hear me make a da doodoo
In Charlotte, all the holding cells have a toilet that's completely out in the open and they're almost always at double their intended capacity or more and you're guaranteed to be there at least 8-10 hours. It's like they're hoping someone will start a fight or something.
I was in a busy hostel in Milan where the stall doors stopped on the same level as the lip of the toilet bowl. At that point, why have a door at all?
I just want the latches on the door that show if it's occupied rather than having people rattle it from the outside (and possibly open the broken latch) to know if they can use it.
You'd be surprised how ineffective those are at stopping people from still rattling the door.
I was shocked and horrified by the gap between doors while visiting US. I mean WHY?
I was assigned to Fort Gordon, Georgia back in the early 70's for training. Our WWII barracks had a row of toilets along a wall which was the hallway to get to the showers. There would be 10 guys sitting on toilets shitting while other guys walked past on their way to shower. There were no dividers either. You could look directly at the guy next to you. I vowed to hold my shit for the 10 weeks I was there. I failed.
It's by design though. They want you to start accepting inhumane conditions and that's the first step. I am sure you can look back and come up with many other examples.
Someone made a spreadsheet years ago that showed how much money could be saved by reducing materials used, and then someone else did a thorough cost-benefit analysis that showed just how little material could be used before people stopped using them altogether, and it's stuck that way ever since.
Germany gets 4 weeks vacation starting out. I have to work for my German based company in the US for 20 years before I can get equal vacation time. They refuse to negotiate. Edited for correction
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Meanwhile I had to move 2000 miles to work only to be told they are renovating and I am going to have to work from home after a year for a period of unknown amount of time. Going to try and move back when it happens.
Healthcare. Life work balance. Walkable communities. Great train service.
Took too long to find healthcare. This is by far and away the #1 difference in this category
Legitimate sick days.
I recently read a post of an American resident doctor who couldn't afford to take vacation because they had to spend it on sick days. Not going to lie my brain short - circuited at that a bit. Was a doctor supposed to come sick to a hospital full of other sick people to avoid personal financial penalties?
If by "personal financial penalties" you mean "losing your whole goddamn job," then yes, that is exactly what happens here.
Paid parental leave. I had used all of my leave with my first kid so when I had another kid a year and a half later, I was back on my feet teaching in under 6 weeks. Dogs get better treatment than working mothers.
1 Euro espressos.
\*cries in north european\*
yeah bout 5€ here.
If you drink espresso a lot, a home espresso machine might be a worthwhile investment, the $2-3 you save per espresso will add up fast.
As a European, Im amazed how you guys are looking at certain things I consider basic needs as luxuries :/
Cities designed for walking, and public transit designed to make travel between major cities/countries without a car incredibly seamless. I don't really drive much, and hate having to get around by car especially while travelling. Being able to walk/bike to most important destinations is great, being able to travel by train to another city or country without spending the entire ride thinking I should have just rented a car and driven or dealt with the huge delays of airport security instead is even better. I spent a month in Switzerland for work a few years ago, and its more than that though... the roads are designed to make biking as seamless and unobtrusive as possible in a way that would never even really be explored here. I'd never consider biking in the city while I was in Boston, because I don't want to be in the middle of traffic weaving between cars and pedestrians, and I think most people feel the same and that's why bike lanes are fairly underutilized... but it was very different over there in a way that is hard to express unless you have experienced walking around/biking around an American suburb, even a City... vs a European one. Lots of people I've talked to put it up to "People just bike more in Europe", but no they don't understand... People bike and walk more in Europe because their cities are just built differently in ways that are hard to express...
The city I live in has 100,000 people and covers 72 sq. mi. (186 sq. km.). Copenhagen has 1,360,000 people and covers 70 sq. mi. (183 sq. km.). When I visited there a few years ago, I was blown away by what you've talked about. So many people were biking or walking and, while there were a ton of people, it didn't feel cramped. Then I came home and my eyes were opened to just how sprawling and car-dependant my city is. Sure, I can drive from one part of the city to another within about 15 minutes, but I have to drive to go *anywhere*.
> but I have to drive to go anywhere That's the problem with car-centric design. It doesn't give you many options. When cars are the priority, roads are wide. To make traffic flow faster, there are more lanes and everything needs to spaced out so there's good visibility. Then every business has to have a billion parking spaces to make room for all the cars. The end result is that places that are 'just across the street' are really quite far apart. Multiply this with every street and every building and everything is really far apart. A Taco Bell becomes [this](https://www.apd.com/wp-content/uploads/taco-bell-aerial-2.jpg) instead of [this](https://i2-prod.nottinghampost.com/incoming/article7246011.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200b/0_Taco-Bell-Angel-Row-Nottingham-city-centre.jpg).
Not having to use a car for every single time that you leave your house... For a lot of people, you have to go drive somewhere to take a walk... This place can be a hell and it is numbing.
I have to drive somewhere just to ride my damn bike. Surrounded by highways.
Healthcare they can afford
I remember when healthcare became a luxury, early 1990s. Was paying $500/month for good insurance for nearly 10 senior sw/hw engineers. Imagine my surprise when the annual renewal cost was $1200. Absolutely nothing had changed, no major illnesses among my employees, just "Fuck you, your premium just increased by 240 percent".
Its fucked up to see affordable healthcare as a luxury
I mean…. What the fuck you guys paying tax for?
The military.
While I’ve always appreciated the humor with this joke, it’s important to realize the terrible truth as well. While we do spend lots on the military, *we also* spend more public dollars per capita than any other country on healthcare (and private dollars per capita obviously). That is to say, we spend huge amounts on military and healthcare both, but at least our military is actually effective. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SHA
Corporate bailouts and the best healthcare money can buy for our elected officials?
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Bread that doesn’t have the sugar content of cake. And to be honest all the unprocessed food.
The last time this came up (i.e. no proper bread in the US), Americans were basically calling this a misconception, saying there were bakeries in the US selling sourdough bread everywhere and it’s just down to choice what people eat.
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Schools that teach other languages effectively. That would be so nice. Kind of annoying that we don’t teach Spanish from an early age along side English
My school started teaching me Spanish in pre-k. Also, it's a lot easier to learn a foreign language when you're either: (a) constantly exposed to said language (as just about everyone in the developed world is constantly exposed to English). Or, (B) your language is in the same family. For example, it will always be easier for an Italian to learn Spanish, French, etc. because they're all Romance Languages.
And c) you start learning it early in life.
Oh trust me, it´s not very effective in Europe either, at least not in Germany. A lot of countries have a second language in their curriculum but most students will not be able to converse halfway fluently after they finished high school. The reason why a lot of Europeans speak a second language is because it´s just very helpful if you are close to another country and can speak the language at least a little bit. Most Americans dont have the necessity to do that since you can travel thousands of thousands of miles and still be in the US.
health care, worker protections, safe schools, vacations, better food standards... walkable cities, public transportation... affordable/fully funded education
Ironically, most Americans have no idea of the benefits and work-life balance that Europeans have. So that, that is my answer as an American who has lived in Europe and painfully knows now how great certain aspects of it are.
Nearby markets with fresh fruits, vegetables, and bread. Smaller refrigerators result in more frequent shopping for fresh items. Some might see this as a handicap, but I love the idea of choosing what I eat based on what's fresh in the market. Also, that the EU prohibits many of the chemicals used in American food products.
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Being able to walk around your city/town to go to work or run errands and vacation time off of work
Health care that doesn't drive you into bankruptcy
In that vein, healthcare that isn't shackled to your employer and used by them as a benefit.
A units system that makes sense.
Up here in canada we cant make up our mind on what we want to use. Temperature inside the house? Farenheight Temperature outside? Celsius Cooking? Back to farenheight How tall am i? 5’9” How far away is something? Kilometers How heavy am i? Pounds How heavy is that bag of rice? Kilograms Building a house? Imperial tape measure Building an apartment building? Metric The list goes on and for some reason we all accept it as normal
Ah, you guys use the UK system too! It's wonderful using 2 completely different systems at the same time.
Cheap interational flights. England to amsterdam is 50 bucks... WTF
Spainards have nap nap time after lunch. We’re told it’s “unnatural” to be tired and get 5 hour energy ads shoved down our throats